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November 04, 2013

Junk DNA?

A frequent objection to a Designer of the universe and life is junk DNA. Darwinists claim that this DNA that has no apparent purpose is leftover residue from epochs of evolution, and they claim that a Designer would not have been so wasteful.

New studies are finding, however, that this DNA isn't junk, and actually has a purpose. A recently published study finds that it regulates the other genes that have a more obvious purpose. One person described this DNA as the operating system for the rest.

[A] report adds to growing experimental support for the idea that all that extra stuff in the human genes, once referred to as “junk DNA,” is more than functionless, space-filling material that happens to make up nearly 98% of the genome. The paper adds to a growing body of knowledge establishing a considerable role for this material in the regulation of gene expression and its potential role in human disease....

Back in the old days, the general wisdom had it that introns loaded into the human genome were basically useless. While some noncoding DNA is transcribed in noncoding RNA, such as transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA, regulatory RNA, or endogenous retroviruses, others produce RNA with no known function or identified utility to the cell.

But over the past few years, as high-powered analytical tools and genomic information have become available, the function of introns, such as transcription factor recognition sequences, has become better understood. And, as John Stamatoyannopoulos, M.D., associate professor of genome sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, points out, while only about 2% of the human genome codes for proteins, “Hidden in the remaining 98 percent are instructions that basically tell the genes how to switch on and off." His laboratory focuses on disease-associated variants in regulatory regions of DNA.

Comments

The Darwinian paradigm has set back science at least 70 years. From the rejection of Mendelian genetics in the early days, to the (I don't know what it does, so therefore it must be junk) mindset that came even after the formulation of the modern synthesis. It seems only a small handful of scientist with very limited research funds were actually questioning this paradigm while their work was largely ignored by the status quo. Think of all the time wasted, when instead of writing ncDNA off as junk, we could have been discovering these functional elements which are only now increasingly being discovered.

"Prof. John Mattick, recently claimed that, ‘the failure to recognize the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology’ [Genius of Junk (DNA), Catalyst,
Thursday, 10 July 2003]"

Aug. 2, 2013 — Researchers from the Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at Sydney's Centenary Institute have confirmed that, far from being "junk," the 97 per cent of human DNA that does not encode instructions for making proteins can play a significant role in controlling cell development.

I wonder.... the beauty fashioned inside of mind's contours in that moment of time it notes a falling star, never to see another...... I cannot unearth this structure's utility as I had never spied but one. Mind's junk to be sure, they tell me. But what fun...... the curves in my ceiling placed as well, not in function yet in fun.... we find these junkish paintings of laughing artists all about. They had never learned that fun is junk. To Tooth and Claw yes, but to Joy, no.

That the genomic itch we call rape reproduces, or rather, gets reproduced, just is justification for its existence.

There cannot be any other reasoning. Genomic Perpetuation just is flourishing, which just is good. On these grounds Sam Harris' entire moral landscape failed the test of coherence.

Atheism can't seem to jump high enough to get its feet off of that ontological subtext in any context.

That is as far as atheism can see..... into anything.

That is why atheism cannot see into Love’s Landscape beyond Law’s Pain, beyond Law’s sort of Dying, and into Love’s Pain, into Love’s sort of Dying. Atheism cannot comprehend, see into, make sense out of, such a language in which Love rather than indifference is the End of Ad Infinitum. No. Atheism cannot see into Christ’s Landscape at all. Love’s Ontology is an alien inside of the Outside, for Love pours into that landscape of necessary indifference and declares that Love is in and by ontological necessity the supreme Ethic in all possible worlds in and by Immutable Love's necessarily triune E Pluribus Unum. The ontology of Immutable Love which Atheism just cannot contain, stand on, re-create within its own indifference just is that singularity of Unity that just is Love’s necessarily triune E Pluribus Unum amid and among Love’s First Distinct, all that is Self, and amid and among Love’s Second Distinct, all that is Other, and, finally, all which these Two Distincts by embrace necessarily beget, Love’s Third Distinct: the Singular-Us that just is E Pluribus Unum.

Transposons - which are part of the 'junk' that makes up much of our genome - are 'parasites' adapted to 'live' in our genome. That explains their presence by itself without their having function useful to us.

I'm curious, why do offer a transposon as evidence against design? We find here only your definition of purpose, a definition which precludes our own experienced nuances inside of writing, inside of painting, inside of our own creative works. Your front-loaded presuppositions cannot account for everything we find atop genome in this regard, though such events do take place, do occur inside, atop, via, and around every mind/hand.

If it had to be that way, then you had to conclude as you do and Truth is we know not what, and yet again, there again, your front-loaded presuppositions do not allow the evidence to drive conclusions in any way we can make sense out of. Evidence doesn’t drive anything, really; not in the sense we all know we need to achieve in freedom from physical systems. So much for insight.

As with Junk DNA, we find purposes as the years go on, and we may with other fascinating items as well, or, we may not, but such just is not our stopping point, for inside of the singular arena of Purpose and Creative, Artistic Acts we find several truths. First, we find more explanatory power for reality as we know it, for creative acts on the grounds of pure beauty, of raw joy, of sheer fun just do saturate the real world, the observed world, and thus presuppositions which can, in intellectual honesty, account for such do by default provide us with a higher degree of plausibility. Second, we find no need, ever, for an end-of-research inside of the Uncreated’s infinite arena, for Joy and Life are but part of a single whole, neither being illusion, each tied to the other. Yet here in your premature settled conclusions inside of a rapidly evolving and highly theoretical field we find all sorts of incoherent hard-stops, this OP being but one example in your suggested hard-stop on the current understanding of A or B as settled matters, Truth and Joy being simply a few other examples which you must stop short of. Your thinking on transposons is the mirror image of that unscientific thinking we see in the OP’s Junk DNA decades ago, and yet we find you demonstrating that same line here right before our eyes, despite the OP’s evidence that what we think we know may not be all there is to know. As for Joy, as for Creative Acts, as for Truth, well, you cannot plausibly account for either of these via your front-loaded presuppositions. But worst of all, the mater seems settled to you. Just like it was on several of those bits of “Junk”, and thus, your presuppositions being satisfied, we need not further any other efforts in research on transposons, for, clearly, there can be no purpose to such.

Any set of front-loaded presuppositions which demands that we stop asking questions on the grounds that its belly is full, which cannot account for creative, artistic acts, which is unable to support the weight of joy, and which concedes that evidence does not magically free thought from physical systems and thereby surrenders truth itself is a set of presuppositions so highly implausible, so artificially fractured, and so loaded with incoherent hard-stops that we wonder at what is driving such a mind to think such a way. We all know that, clearly, it need not think that way. I think, now, I shall go and splash some copper-flaked paint across my trees…..for the fun of it ~~~ such just is actuality ~~~